How to Build a High Performance Team in Banking

Chris Droussiotis2013

Building a High Performance Team

Executive Summary: High-performing teams can provide businesses with a significant

competitive advantage and function as an engine of innovation within the organization.

Building and sustaining such a team requires strong leadership capabilities, good communication skills and a willingness to foster an environment of collaboration and openness.

The payoffs associated with high-performing teams results to significantly higher ROI, greater productivity and higher retention rates of key employees.

Leading a Developing Team's Relationship

It starts with the leader

• Bonding– Set shared goals to establish a common purpose and vision to unify the team.– Provide team activities other than working on the task at hand– Establish more familiarity as a group by creating fun traditions for the team to participate.

• Building Trust– Confidence– Manage performance problems– Make yourself available to the group when they need you

• Communicating– Constant communication about goals, tasks and the team mission are important. – Don't limit communication to work-related goals; seek feedback and input on the team's developing

relationship. – Develop the team needs, clear expectations, defined roles, and specific responsibilities.

• Managing Conflict– Established teams know the strengths and weaknesses of each participant – The leader must step up to manage conflicts as early in the process as possible– Active conflict management by the leader requires much more hands-on management in the early stages.

Behind every great team is a strong and visionary leader. A leader whose job is not to control, but to teach, encourage, and organize when necessary.

Introduction: The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of its Parts

Effective decision-making

Conflict resolution practices that focus on positive outcomes

Skill at recognizing and correcting errors

Culture of mutual support

Building a High Performance Team

• Cultivating Peak Performance

– A well-oiled and disciplined team, one in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts allows members to achieve results far beyond their individual abilities.

– Building a high performance team takes a lot of hard work and skill, to blend the different personalities, abilities, and agendas into a cohesive unit willing to work for a common goal.

Define the need.

• Define the need. As a leader, you must establish the broad, compelling purpose for the team. What is the large, desired outcome? What do you want to improve? Eliminate? Change? Don't be afraid to dream big. But resist the temptation to handcuff the team by writing a detailed prescription in advance of the diagnosis. Your vision, properly articulated, will be the engine that drives and inspires your team. It will determine who should be on the team, what resources are needed, how quickly a conclusion must be reached, what falls within the scope of the team, and how success will be measured and rewarded.

Recruit the right people

• Recruit the right people. Now you have to find the talent that is willing to commit to your vision with missionary-like zeal. Choose members who represent a wide range of backgrounds, skills and abilities. Try to limit participation to three to seven members. Any more and each individual's contribution will be compromised.

• Also look to imbue your team with a wide mix of cultural and professional viewpoints. Such diversity should give life to ideas and opinions that might not otherwise have been aired.

Shared values

• Not only must team members embrace your mission, they must share your values. Effective teams demand close collaboration, trust, honesty, passion, and genuine appreciation for each member's contributions. You don't want somebody that has a different work ethic, moral compass or commitment than you do. To develop that value system, challenge the team to read books, give them magazine articles, watch movies - anything that might challenge their conventional thinking.

Develop Common Goals

• Develop common goals. A high performance team thrives in an environment where they can unite behind a common and compelling purpose - a cause everyone can understand, identify with, and commit to. Ideally, these goals should be developed by the team members themselves; this tends to create ownership, buy-in and commitment. Goals should be formalised through a written charter - an agreement that clearly states what the team wants to accomplish, why its goals are important and how the team will work together to achieve the desired outcome. Consider an off-site retreat, free from the routine pressures of the office, to set the goals. Such an event has the added benefit of injecting a spirit of camaraderie among the team members.

Set ground rules

• Set ground rules. Make sure team members understand why the team exists and know the roles each member plays. They need to know how decisions will be made, how to deal with conflict, how to communicate, and how results will be measured. The success of the team depends upon creating an environment in which team members openly contribute ideas while recognizing and respecting the differences in others. Above all, they need to understand how long their commitment will last.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

• If a statement of purpose is the engine that drives the team, communication is the oil that keeps the engine well lubricated. Fail to lubricate the engine and it will lock up. So, too, will the team fail without effective communication. Your job is to ensure that team members communicate openly and honestly, refrain from personal assaults, and stay focused on the task. Communication is more than talking; it's about listening intently, and asking questions to get clarification.

• As Stephen Covey relates in his bestseller Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, "Seek first to understand, then to be understood." Face-to-face meetings work best in a team environment, supplemented by telephone, e-mail and faxes. It's a good idea to circulate meeting minutes to track progress and keep others in the company informed of the team's progress.

Promote curiosity

• Curiosity and the search for new solutions, fuels every great group. Members don't just solve problems. They are engaged in a process of discovery that serves as its own reward. But they also have another quality that allows them both to identify significant problems and to find creative, boundary-busting solutions rather than simplistic ones: they have hungry, eager minds.

Establish Urgency

• Establish urgency. Virtually every great group defines itself in terms of an enemy. Sometimes the enemy is real, such as a budget cut or a hostile takeover. Often the threat is more arbitrary, such as self-imposed deadlines. Tell the group it is up against tremendous odds and watch the wily resourcefulness kick into high gear.

Keep score

• A team can't perform if it doesn't know what it's doing. But that's not enough. There must be a commitment to constant improvement. To accomplish that, you have to measure performance. Don't wait until the end of the season to address performance. Feedback should be immediate. Practice openbook management and make sure team members have those numbers that are important to them in tracking their success.

Reward

• Reward. Even though their contributions may not be exactly equal, it's important to recognise the team's efforts. Acknowledge individual achievement during group meetings and compliment the team as a whole on working well together. Highlight interim successes with a team lunch or food brought into a meeting. Such mini-celebrations are a great morale booster. People repeat performance that garners reward and recognition. When you focus on the positive, you develop the habit of doing things right.

Back Off

• If you've implemented the above steps correctly, then get out of the way. As the leader, your role will change over the life of the team. In the beginning, you may have spent a lot of time developing the mission, identifying what the team was setting out to accomplish, and, more importantly, helping develop interpersonal and group skills such as conflict resolution and meeting management.

• Now comes the time to let go and let the team become performers and the leaders. Trust the team process, even if you think you know better. Nothing undermines a team faster than for their moves to be trumped. Teams must be empowered to achieve the results, without fear of being overridden by the top floor.

Team-Based Compensation Vs. Individual

• Team Compensation Overview– Team compensation is typically used when teamwork is mission critical. – These teams are judged corporately as to speed and accuracy. – The compensation of the group is typically scaled in percentages of the maximum pay scale depending on when or how well the team

completes the task. Individual Compensation Overview

• Individual Compensation Overview– Every employee is typically measured and compensated based on his contribution to the team.

• Team Compensation Advantages• In team compensation, employees may perform better in hopes of not letting down the team. This is especially so in project-based jobs

which require every team member to complete a task before the rest of the team can advance to the next stage of work. Information is shared more freely when teams are reviewed and compensated as a group because the incentive to withhold information for personal gain is reduced. A 2010 study by University of California, Santa Barbara, states workers will try to perform in a way may make them "willing to make sacrifices for teammates ("take one for the team") that they would not otherwise make."

• Individual Compensation Advantages• Individual compensation pays specifically based on individual performance regardless of team performance. This provides more pay to

higher-achieving employees and less pay to lower-achieving ones. It allows for competition among employees for prestige and pay which provides a strong incentive to perform. It also avoids punishing employees based on the poor performance of fellow team members, resulting in better morale for the individuals. This compensation may also seem more personal, especially to higher-performing employees.

• Team Compensation Disadvantages• Team compensation can lead to individual employees carrying too much burden and others being compensated for poor performance.

Arguments among the team in these cases may diminish morale and harm the quality of the deliverable. Power struggles for credit when a task goes well or blame when it goes poorly can arise in a group compensation model.

• Individual Compensation Disadvantages• Individual compensation can breed unethical competition as in commission sales when staff members fight over a customer or a sale.

Employees posturing for a better positions or rankings at the exclusion of teamwork can come from this method. Information and work techniques may pool with motivated employees to the exclusion of those who need to be trained.

Team-Based Compensation Vs. Individual

• Team Compensation Overview– Team compensation is typically used when teamwork is mission critical. – These teams are judged corporately as to speed and accuracy. – The compensation of the group is typically scaled in percentages of the maximum pay scale

depending on when or how well the team completes the task. Individual Compensation Overview

Team Vs. Individual Performance Appraisals

• Performance appraisals, whether team or individual, provide feedback to workers or organizational teams. Traditionally, performance evaluations provide information to help improve performance, increase efficiency and define management's expectations. Performance appraisals compare work performed against measurable objectives that the employee and supervisor agreed to at the beginning of the appraisal period. As work has become more team oriented, performance appraisals now measure how a team of workers perform rather than just how an individual performs his job.

• Definition of Team Performance Appraisals• As jobs become more intricate, organizations must rely on teams of people to accomplish tasks. To evaluate job performance by teams of

people, organizations institute team performance appraisals. Team performance appraisals assess the performance of teamwork on organizational performance. Team performance appraisals can range from recognition of individual performance and its contribution to group outcomes to only an assessment of the organization's performance. When only an organization's performance is evaluated, no individual appraisals are completed and individuals do not receive performance ratings.

• Types of Team Performance Appraisals• The culture and organizational structure of the workplace environment influence the type of team performance appraisal best suited to

evaluate and measure performance. If work teams exist in the organization, but are used only occasionally to accomplish projects, individual performance measurements are used to determine a final rating of the employee. When an organization uses teamwork more frequently, performance appraisals still emphasize individual performance but introduce an assessment of the worker's contribution to the team effort. If an organization uses a significant amount of teamwork to accomplish its objectives, team performance appraisals link team productivity measurements with individual performance measurements. Organization's with only a team approach do not utilize individual performance appraisals. Team performance measurements determine monetary rewards.

• Elements of Individual Performance Appraisals• Individual performance appraisals are the traditional appraisals that measure individual performance against measurable objectives.

Individual performance appraisals provide an opportunity for employees and supervisors to share ideas and reach mutually agreed upon objectives. Individual performance appraisals focus on the skills required to perform the current job and skills that must be acquired for promotion. Individual performance evaluations are tools to determine monetary compensation. This type of performance appraisal provides feedback and recognition to the individual.

• Comparison of Individual and Team Performance Appraisals• Individual performance appraisals measure an employee's work against standard performance measures. Standard performance

measures are derived from individual job descriptions. Often, a direct link exists between performance and pay based on an employee's job rating from the appraisal. Team performance appraisals assess an individual's contribution to the team. Team performance appraisals are appropriate to support an organization's efforts to transition from an individual-based organization to an team-based organization. Team performance appraisal, for example, assess whether the team met its goals, produced a quality product and worked well together.

Strategic Objectives in Performance Appraisals

• Improving Morale• Morale is an important factor in creating a productive workforce. According to the article "Performance Appraisal"

on the managerial resource Changing Minds, when performance appraisals are properly executed they can improve company morale and create motivation for employees. By working with employees to identify the weak points in their job performance and then helping to create a plan to combat that weakness, managers are setting a tone with employees that can create a positive feeling toward the company and its goals. This is why it is a good idea to emphasize the positive in performance reviews, and then turn negatives into positives by developing a course of action to assist employee development.

• Budgeting Tool• According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, a performance appraisal should be

used as an important budgeting tool for a business. Through the analysis of performance appraisals, the company can determine which employees are due for a raise, and which employees are not. These considerations need to be added to the following year's budget. Other performance appraisals may require the termination of employees, and that causes two budgetary considerations to come into play. First of all, the money associated with having the terminated employees is put back into the annual budget. However, there are also budget considerations for replacing terminated employees as well. The company needs to decide if the employees will be replaced, and if there would be a benefit in paying a higher salary to a more experience candidate, or if hiring a lower cost entry-level employee will better serve the company's strategic goals.

• Set Goals• One of the important parts of strategic objectives is reaching company goals. These can be metrics established

for performance, or a percentage increase in revenue dollars. A performance evaluation should be a time for the manager and employee to discuss the professional development of the employee, and establish strategic goals that will be used to measure that development. The employee and manager can work together on the success of the employee and raise the employee-manager relationship to a more effective working level.

Performance Evaluation

Performance Evaluation

Performance Evaluation

Performance Evaluation

Performance Evaluation

Performance Evaluation

Performance Evaluation

Performance Evaluation

Performance Evaluation

Performance Evaluation

Performance Evaluation

Performance Evaluation